Chapter 339 – Miracle
Ella
“I can’t wait any longer” I say, two hours, one shower, and three sandwiches later. I stand up in the tiny steel kitchen, accidentally scattering the bag of chips I was picking at all over the counter. Honestly, I wasn’t even eating because I was hungry. I was just trying to distract myself.
“Ella,” Sinclair sighs, reaching for my wrist.
“No!” I say, moving away from his grasp. “They’re being selfish! They know I’m dying to know!”
“Let them take their time!” Sinclair urges, standing up with me. I turn to glare at him and see him looking longingly at the hallway as well.
“See?” I say, pointing at him and narrowing my eyes. “You want to go too.”
Caught, he looks at me and grimaces a little. “Well, obviously I want to go talk to them, Ella,” he says, rolling his eyes. “He’s my brother as much as she’s your sister – I want to know as badly as you do –”
“Then let’s go!” I laugh, slapping my hand on the table and grinning down at the baby, who looks at me curiously. I laugh again at his expression and coo down at him. “Let’s go see your auntie and your Roger and your new cousin!”
“Ella,” Sinclair warns, stoic. “It’s not right. They’re entitled to their time alone!”
“Oh whatever,” I say, waving a hand to dismiss the Idea as I grabbing the half–empty bag of chips off the table. “She’s probably hungry. She’s a pregnant woman! She needs sustenance!”
And then, before he can stop me, I’m charging down the hall, determined to see my sister and learn everything.
“No, stop!” Sinclair calls half–heartedly behind me, and grin over my shoulder at him, because I know he could catch and stop me if he wanted to. I laugh then, hurrying towards the door to our room and reaching for it, thinking that my mate is just as nosy as I am – he just has more qualms about indulging in it.
rap lightly on the door before pushing it open. “Hello!” I sing, sweeping into the room, my heart swelling with happiness when I see Cora laying down on the bed, her head propped up against the pillows, her shirt pushed up a little and Roger pressing his ear low against her stomach.
“Hey!” she says, her face breaking out into a huge smile that does my heart so, so good to see,
especially after how incredibly sad she was when she arrived at the bunker. And as I cross to her I think, suddenly, about the insane swing that this day has taken.
まず
My face falls as I remember that we were attacked this morning – that I killed a man, ripped his
bedroom…
“Ella,” Cora gasps, her voice suddenly worried. Suddenly alert, Roger sits up, likewise looking at me with concern.
“No,” I say, letting myself sit down hard on the bed and doing my best to smile at them as Sinclair comes to the door. “It’s just been a…big day, hasn’t it?”
Cora clicks her tongue, realizing that she, too, forgot about my morning in the excitement of this afternoon, and she opens her arms to me so I can come in for a hug. Sinclair closes the door behind him and comes to my side, taking the baby from me before I move across the bed and allow Cora to wrap me in her arms, surrounding me with support.
Watching me closely, Sinclair sits down on the edge of the bed, the baby happily tucked against his arm. All right? he asks me, with a little concerned nudge to my mind.
I nod happily to him and then turn to Cora. “Come on,” I say, poking her with my elbow. “Cheer me up, then, distract me from the fact that my baby was almost kidnapped this morning by telling me all about your miracle.”
Cora laughs a little and complies with my request, looking down at her bare flat stomach and giving a little shrug. “There’s nothing much to say yet, Ella,” she says. “I’m barely pregnant. If a woman came to me in this condition, just hardly having missed her period, I would honestly advise her not to tell any family or friends that she’s pregnant yet. A lot can happen in these early stages.”
“No to this baby,” Roger murmurs, definitive, returning his ear to her stomach. “This one’s strong! “How do you know?” she asks, laughing and casually brushing his hair away from his face. “Because,” he says, smug, “the child has incredible genes – the paternal line is especially fierce, not to mention good looking
Cora and I both laugh and she swats his head a little, making him sit up and grin at her.
Sinclair leans towards his brother, curious. “Do you feel the bond, Roger?”
Roger turns towards him then, and his face drops a little, making my stomach twist. Cora likewise notices that something is off and she sits forward, worried.
“The bond?” she asks, and then she looks at Sinclair, blinking, remembering. “Yes,” she says softly. “I remember you talking about the bond.” She turns to Roger now. “You can feel the same thing?”
“I can feel it,” he says to her, reassuring, but then he looks back at Sinclair. “But it feels….different to me,” he adds, “than the way you described it with Rafe.”
“Well, the important thing is that you feel it, yes?” I say eagerly, leaning forward, wanting it to be all right. Sinclair slides his hand over to take mine, reassuring.
“Ella’s right,” he says, looking only at his brother. “All bonds are different, it doesn’t have to be exactly like what I felt with Rafe. If you feel it, it’s real. But what do you mean when you say it’s different?”
“Well,” Roger says, turning back to Cora and then looking down at her stomach. “You could… communicate with the baby, from very early on. And you said that you knew that Rafe was a boy from the very first moment you sensed your link…”
“You’re not getting a sense of the baby’s sex?” I ask, leaning forward to stare at him, curious.
“No,” he murmurs, closing his eyes and trying harder. “I feel the link, for sure. But I’m getting…” he sighs and opens his eyes, looking over at Sinclair. “Less information, I guess, than you did.”
Sinclair leans forward and puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder, not concerned but wanting to support him.
“Do you think it’s because the baby’s half human?” Cora asks, curious.
“Is it?” I ask, looking wide–eyed at her and then at Roger.
“What?” Cora asks, turning to me. “Ella, of course it is,” she says, gesturing towards herself.
“Well, I don’t know,” I say, shrugging. “Some kids get or express – more genes from their fathers than their mothers, and vice versa. Maybe it’s…90% wolf and 10% human, or the other way around. Or maybe it’s like…” I grin, laughing a little to myself, “a little Roger clone.”
Cora wrinkles her nose at me at the idea but Roger grins happily, and I laugh again at their opposing reactions.
I look to Sinclair, seeing what he thinks, but he just shrugs. “As far as I know, this is the first pregnancy of its kind,” he murmurs, smiling around at us. “Anything could happen.”
“Is it, though?” Cora murmurs, her hands going to her stomach, suddenly worried, Then she looks at me. “Ella…”
“What?” I ask.
“Well,” she continues, hesitating and glancing at Roger. “I mean, we know that Roger is the father, because he can sense his bloodline. But…you don’t think it could be like…what mom did, do you? To our mothers? Where she… took one of her embryos, and put it in me, and then gave the father a nudge to go to their beds? I mean..this baby was probably conceived during that freak storm…” she says, biting her lip and looking at Roger, who goes pale.
“No, Cora,” I say, reaching out and grabbing her hand, shaking my head and making her look at me. “Mom asked Reina- and your mother too, I’m sure to carry us. They consented to it.
―
“But what if,” she says, hesitating again, “what if it wasn’t mom? What if,” she looks worriedly around at all of us again. “What if…it’s the god of darkness? Who also arranged for Rafe to be born? What if he…”
–
Cora bites her lip, looking down at her belly before continuing in a whisper. “What if he arranged for this baby too, and because he’s a different kind of god from our mother – didn’t bother to ask me if I consented to it? What if this baby is not mine at all?”
